FLORIDA STAIR HORTICULTURAL SOCIRTY. 105 
stare the plants in the face ,but the “tiller” will have to 
seek other vocations or succumb to the inevitable. 
“Necessity is the mother of invention. ” So when the soils 
began to fail to give lorth abundant crops, man began to 
study the laws of nature and he soon discovered wherein the 
trouble lay and began at once to supply the needed plant 
foods. 
Thus commercial fertilizers were invented and placed on the 
market. They were received with a good deal of incredulity 
by the husbandman who in his ignorance of chemistry could 
not understand how an inorganic substance could be converted 
into living matter. Necessity, however, compelled him to try 
it and to-day there are thousands and thousands of tons of 
chemicals annually used to increase the productiveness of the 
soil, and the increase is going to be just in that proportion to 
which the farmers and fruit growers are educated to their 
proper use. I do not mean that they should study to be 
chemists but they should understand the sources of .various 
plant foods and their effects upon different plant life. I have 
tried to study it from this standpoint as it is the practical 
work that finally tells. The chemist can tell us that an 
orange tree contains certain per cents, of water, sugar, potash* 
phosphoric acid, etc., and we may have all of these at our 
hand, but without the aid of dame nature we could not pro¬ 
duce a single fruit, but we can, with the aid of the chemist 
and the help of dame nature, grow trees that will give an 
abundant yield by supplying the necessary plant food which 
can be worked over by the trees and given back in the shape 
of “golden apples.” 
I hope you will not think that I atn a chemist, for what I 
know about chemistry is so small alongside of what I do not 
know, that a “drop in the bucket” would be no comparison. 
As stated aboye, I have tried to study this question from a 
practical standpoint, and if any of the information given proves 
of value to even one person I shall feel repaid for my trouble. 
I do hope, however, that it may be the means of food lor 
thought which will lead the growers to better understand the 
the use of agricultural chemicals. 
One of the most plentiful elements of plant food is nitrogen, 
yet it is the most costly, owing to man’s inability to trap it 
and get it into shape to handle without great expense. It com¬ 
poses about four-fifths of the air we breathe and enters into 
the formation of all animal and plant life. Without ammonia 
it would be impossible to grow anything. Your soil might 
contain an abundance of potash in the most available form, 
the phosphoric acid might be there served up in the most ap¬ 
petizing form for plants, yet without ammonia there to start 
